Ukraine has been gradually emerging from the economic collapse of 2014-2015. While the growth rate is respectable for a developed country, it remains low compared to developing neighbor-states. Ukraine’s economy advanced by 2.4 percent in 2016 and 2.5 percent in 2017, while emerging economies in Europe grew by 3.2 percent in 2016 and 5.7 percent in 2017. Sadly, two years into expansion Ukraine has not yet caught up with the pre-crisis level of output. Perhaps more importantly, there are surprisingly few signs of a major acceleration of economic growth just around the corner. Indeed, the rate of unemployment is stubbornly high and has been hovering at around 10 percent for the last two years.
Industrial production has been growing in fits and starts with frequent contractions rather than in a consistent manner. After an inflationary boost to government revenues, public finances appear to send bad omens with consolidated budget running cash deficit in the first quarter of 2018 after several years of healthy surpluses. Even positive signs, such as high growth in investment (18.2 percent in 2017) is against quite low base and is crucially dependent on imports.
